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HENG CH’AU: June 18, 1977. 7:15 A.M. From a car pulled up behind us: "You folks are really blowing my mind!" Your dedication is really something but you are not heading East." Pause. "Well, bless you."
For some reason I’m feeling irritable, sore. I visualize Kuan Yin and think: in giving "who" is tired, "who" charge? If there is no "who," no answer, then there is no problem. Feel refreshed and light, soothed and smoothed. Keep bowing.
8:00 A.M. A woman presses close on my right side. "Please help me!" I keep bowing, not knowing quite what to do. She keeps step, "Please help me. I’m an alcoholic. What can I do? I’ve tried everything."
Me: "I have no answers. I’m just looking, just looking too."
Woman: "But I can’t stop! Help me. Tell me something. What does your master teach?"
Me: "We are Buddhists. In Buddhism it’s said you are your own teacher in that your heart, your mind, is where the answers are ultimately found. I don’t know anything."
Woman: " What does he really teach you?" (Implying some secret teaching.)
Me: "Hard work and patience. Look inside. Try your best."
Woman: "I’ve tried, I’ve tried. I’ve tried my best. What can I do? Help me!"
My heart goes out to this person, but I realize, "What do I know?" I can’t really do anything for her. I’m just a novice. I should stop right now.
Me: "I have no wisdom or answers. I’m just praying and bowing and trying best." I start bowing.
Woman: "Please, please, don’t shut me out." She’s hysterical.
Part of me wants to respond--to do something. But I know I have no skill, no right to be meddling. I have nothing to offer and I already went too far. So painfully, I just keep on bowing. She’s sobbing. "God, oh god, don’t shut me out! Help me, please!" We bow.
In a little while she stops and exclaims, "Bless you, bless you. I have the strength. I have found the strength. I’ll never touch another drop. Bless you."
She runs up to Heng Sure and says the same thing to him, "Bless you, bless you." and then she leaves.
8:30 A.M. A medic from an ambulance station walked across the street to check out. He was with the Krishnas for a year and said, "Now I am into Christianity." He was young and sincere and looking. I gave him a release.
The last two days I have been feeling less and less like an "assault"--less insincere and calculating. Calculating and planning ahead diminishes with each bow, each day. It’s like I was 6 or 7 years old--genuine. This state comes on with bowing and stops as quickly as my mindfulness stops. My face feels clear and young--stealing glances and pretending.
Denison and angry stares, hoots and hollers are no problem. They roll through just like they are coming from other kids saying, "Na, na sissy," or "you better stop walking on my sidewalk.: The Budhadharma is really something.
This lack of fear is not exclusive. Somehow a sense of family with everyone goes with it. It’s like we are all little kids looking and wondering, playing. I’m playing monk with Heng Sure and that’s ok. She’s playing antique dealer and that’s ok. He’s playing motorcycle gang and that’s ok. If praise and scolding come they belong to the sender and wherever they’re at. Somehow getting approval or the need to exclude is absent as in a three year old absorbed in play dough.
The whole world looks like it did when I was a child. A curious game, not to be taken seriously. Always there is "something" inside testing and sorting--some intuitive non--verbal, non-thinking radar-saying "yes" or "no." It was never wrong and always loud and clear in the midst of this strange and wonderful game. I feel it returning now, bowing along, after a long absence and smothering.
Lately there have been vivid memories of childhood--how things exactly looked and seemed then. Almost like time and changes never happened. I remember wondering what role I would play in the charade when I "grew up." It seemed important to keep track of when adults and kids forgot it was play, "make believe" and pretend and got real serious.
The Capuchin monks who lived a block away from where I went to school seemed different and special. They were adults yet they were kind of outside of the game. We could talk and play with them on a level that was not too unlike other kids, but yet there was something special about their lives, their vows (not married, poverty and rituals) that spoke to and touched that part of me that I could never show or talk about but that seems more "real" than anything except Butch the tough kid who used to beat me up after school. They were a link in what became separated realities as I grew older. But then they were one reality. Being a Buddhist monk is home. It is a chance to explore and cultivate truths and paths that held me in awe and wonder as a child and that I almost buried, almost, but not quite.
I think partly some of this has to do with crawling along the gutters and garbage pails and along the backyards as we bow. That’s where we hung out as kids. It was more real and interesting, this is "back stage," behind the props, storefronts, and performances.
Bowing once every three steps is just one cultivation tool that takes you "back stage with yourself. Through the backyards and gutters of the mind. Much like taking your own clock apart to see what makes it tick, down to the last gear and "tick."
Two women stop and ask, "How do you become a monk?"
"Hard work, study, and vows."
Women: "Like no sex?" "No sex, no drugs or intoxicants, no stealing, no killing, and no lying is basically it." Women: "No sex forever?" "Right. As long as you are a monk or nun." Women: "Amazing! Good luck to you!" The most common query of adolescents, "How long do you have to do this?" like our parents or teach is making us do it as punishment or a lesson. "After the dishes, clean the yard…" "Do I have to?" A super laidback beach boy lazily leaned up against a car taking in three steps, one bow through his reflecting sunglasses. His carefully formulated response? "That’s heavy!" Shih Fu somehow knew of our problems with the police and the possibility we might have to use the van longer. When we called the laypeople who were to bring us the cart this weekend, they said, "Shih Fu called this morning and said you should use the van a little longer." Amazing! Shih Fu had called with the answer before we discovered the question. The police incident didn’t happen until after the Master called. So when the Laywoman asked, "Do you want to call Shih Fu?" we both looked at each other, smiled, and said, "No need." Bowing down, my head came right down over a tragic death. On the sidewalk was a large beetle that had just been stepped on. It was writhing and clutching at the air from its back. The whole lower part of its body was squashed and stuck to the sidewalk. Maybe I was projecting, but it seems like incredible suffering and confusion the beetle was experiencing--like it was looking up and saying, "Why, why--I am dying, I am scared. I am really dying right now." It was horrible. For some reason I gave the beetle the Triple Refuge. While I was saying, "Take refuge with the Buddha, take refuge with the Dharma, take refuge with the Sangha…" the beetle grew still and didn’t move. As soon as the ceremony was finished it started to claw and struggle. I reached down and touched a leg with my finger. I wanted to stay and wait for death with the beetle. It’s hard to describe, but I felt very close, familiar with that beetle. I could see its mouth moving and imagine the words of trying to express the inexpressible. It was hard to get up and leave. Part of the beetle went with me and some of me stayed with the beetle like when a close friend dies. Outside of the Jack-in-the-Box near the Malibu Creek Bridge an interesting exchange started to brew between some sunbathers who came over from the ocean side of the road to cool off and found us bowing past. "I did a paper on Buddhists," exclaimed a high school girl. "Hmmm" she followed as she and her friends read the release while looking down the straws past their cokes. Another man who had recently started meditating said, "Boy, it’s hard isn’t it?" "What?" I asked. "Trying to concentrate just for even a minute. I know it’s really hard." Another man was taking this in as well as a cheese-burger, and finally said, "Why do you want to be in nirvana, extinct like a rock?" (Nobody had said anything to that effect--he had picked it up someplace else.) "Well basically the goal is to sort of clean the mind, not kill it. You don’t lobotomize yourself--more like you purify that getting rid of bad habits and false thoughts." He continued, "What about Jesus?" There was my cue to shut up, but I missed it. "He worked really had," I said. The man: "Yeah but we don’t have to work because he did it for us, right?" "Well," I said, "If you’re hungry, will you be satisfied watching someone else eat?" Too far, Heng Ch’au, you still haven’t learned to shut your mouth. "That conversation was a mistake. I should not have argued or debated much less caused someone to be upset or angry. He followed along behind us as we bowed, not angry, but obviously bothered and full of itching doubts and feeling defensive; and I caused it. I felt a crack open and knew intimately that what I put out I got back at that moment. I felt vulnerable and sorry. We were hot and tired as we approached Malibu Creek Bridge--no creek because of the drought. A very attractive woman came up and quietly sat and watched. My antennae went "alert" and was sensing some kind of energy from her and I knew from past mistakes to be careful. "Can I help you, get you anything?" she inquired. "No thanks, we’re fine." She tried Heng Sure, gets nothing, and then comes back again. "Some sunburn lotions?"
"No, we’re fine." We continue to bow. She sits, watches, waits.
We take a break and sit under some bushes. Around the corner comes the woman. "Can I sit with you awhile?" she asks sweetly, unobtrusively. This is getting a bit much.
"Sorry, but our vows don’t allow us to be alone with women," I say without hesitation.
"But there are lots of people nearby." She plies. I hand her a release and start to meditate with Heng Sure. Somewhere, she had changed her clothes and prettied up within five minutes and invisibly, since there were no cars parked nearby. On thinking more about that incident, I realized she was a blend of all the characteristics I would have found appealing and "right for me" in a woman. It was my mind that moved, nothing else. Somehow I had left an opening, a false thought, and in she came through the crack. Still I hope I don’t see her again.